PAVEMENTS

Tonight I had my lemon chicken dinner, alone, at 9PM, everyone else retired and tucked away in various areas of the house. Mid-bite, between the tangy sauce and the chicken meat, I realized for the first time that I am, in fact, not doing this the first time. For months and months now, I have been having late dinners by myself.

I have never felt so young and so adult in my entire life. I am convinced we’ve got it all wrong before—this should be the young adult phase in our lives, or at the very least, in mine anyway. Old enough to be having all these late dinners by myself, young enough to be driven to school.

These days, I catch myself in between: bites, breaths, deep love and seething anger (hate is still too strong a word in my book). I run only to catch up to myself, and in the many in-betweens, I have the slightest almost-awareness that I miss: writing, knowing, the kind of profundity that can only exist in the slowness of things. Sometimes, I suspect I just miss it all, or maybe: I miss the point.

In any case, not now (for fear of unraveling); maybe later (when all this is over and done with).